Jacob Irwin, a senior agricultural business major at Arkansas Tech University, found himself, like many other college students, worrying about the financial burden of college. But that stress has been alleviated, in small part due to the Yell County Cattleman’s Association.

Irwin was a recipient of the Yell County Cattlemen’s Association Student Scholarship, a $500 scholarship for students with a GPA higher than 2.5 who plan to major in an agriculture-related field.

“It helps relieve some of the stress of going to school and the financial burden it brings,” Irwin said. “I have to worry about how I’m going to pay for my education, and now I can focus more on my studies.”

The scholarship might not be much compared to the rising costs of college tuition, but it helps to motivate students to pursue careers in agriculture. In Irwin’s case, it was a good investment: he is currently an agricultural ambassador for Tech’s agriculture department, as well as a member of the university’s pre-vet club.

The pursuit of a veterinarian career was something Irwin — a native of Birta, a small community east of Ola — has always wanted to do. “I lived on a farm myself and worked with horses and cattle,” he said. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to be.”

Careers in agriculture have seen an increase in recent years nationwide, but jobs in farming can still be especially difficult.

“It’s a tough way to make a living,” said A.J. Malnar, a member of Yell County’s Cattlemen Association. “There’s really no security as far as marketing your products. A lot of it is supply and demand, and weather also can cause problems in the farming and agricultural industry.”

“I think one thing is that a lot of people go back to their roots,” Malnar said of why young people choose farming as a career. “Some of their forefathers — maybe not their mother and dad, but their grandparents — were involved in farming.”

“It might look like agriculture’s declining in some places, but there’s methods of farming that’s more efficient than there’s been in the past, and education has a lot to do with it,” Malnar added.